Adventures in the Past
by Auztria
Summary: Ema's building a strange machine... which accidentally sends Miles to the past! Then Ema tries to follow, then Lana goes after them both... It gets complicated. It is not Emworth, or really romance at all, so don't worry. No-one dies, either... probably.
1. Berlin

**Yeah, yeah, it's a time-travel story. I like time-travel stories. If you don't like it, well, you can go jump in a lake.**

* * *

_January 30, 2033_

Miles Edgeworth pushed his glasses up on his nose and glanced with annoyance at the small metal door to the left of the chair he was sitting in. Loud clanks and squeaks resonated from the room beyond, interrupting his reading. He sighed and set the book down, irritatedly shuffling toward the source of the disturbance.

He poked his head around the door. "Ema, could you at least _try _to be quieter in here? I'm trying to read."

Ema Skye, Miles' wife's younger sister, grinned sheepishly at Miles. "Sorry, Miles. I'm almost finished." She gestured to the odd machine standing behind her. "What do you think?"

Miles cocked his head to the side, regarding it with a sickly dismayed look on his face. It was incredibly bizarre. Two large metal boxes with an array of glowing steel rods pointing out of them stood on either side of a raised metal platform. A thick, bent copper rod passed over the platform, linking the two boxes.

"I-It's very, er... _interesting._"

"I know! Isn't it?" Ema stared in wonder at her contraption, seemingly oblivious to Edgeworth's revulsion. "It's wonderful! It's brilliant! It will revolutionize science forever!"

Miles stared at her blankly. _Why did Lana ever let her use the spare bedroom as a laboratory?_

Ema was still gazing at her machine with a frighteningly Oldbag-esque captivation. Miles shook his head, wondering how Ema could be 34 and still get so excited about science. He cleared his throat. "Um... yes. But... what exactly does it _do?_"

"Oh, right! I never told you! It's... an IMT!"

"I... M... T."

"Yes! An IMT! Aren't you amazed!"

_Well, yes, but not in the way I think you believe. _"So... what's an IMT?"

Ema put her hand to her mouth in surprise. Miles suppressed a small smile, remembering how she hadn't done that for years before he used his influence to get her a post in Forensics. "I-I never told you?"

Miles scowled. "You wouldn't tell Lana or I _ANYTHING _about it, remember?"

"Ah... Sorry. Well, an IMT is an Interspatial Matter Transporter! It can take you anywhere in the world, instantly!"

Miles was genuinely surprised. "And you built this... in our spare room... with a toolbox and some chemicals?"

Ema smiled cheerfully at a stunned Edgeworth. "Well, I knew a lot about the chemicals involved. I've been studying this subject for years. And..." she grinned sheepishly at Edgeworth, "it wasn't cheap."

Miles' jaw dropped. "Is _that _why money's been disappearing from my bank account?"

Ema stuck her tongue out slightly and closed her eyes, hand behind head. "Ehh..."

Miles frowned at her, but by now he was more curious than angry. "So... this actually works!"

Ema grasped her chin, eyes thoughtful. "It... should." She glanced at Edgeworth, and her eyes lit up. "Why don't you try it?"

Miles put up his hands. "No, no, no. I will most certainly not partake in-"

"Please, Miles? It's perfectly safe, I promise. Just one test run?"

"W-Well, I..."

"Pleeeeeeeeeease?" She actually looked as if she might cry.

Miles' shoulders sagged. "Very well. But just- this- once. All right?"

"Hooray!" _She really jumped for joy... _"Now, where do you want to go?"

Miles put a hand to his head, thinking. "Well, I haven't seen Franziska in a while. Why don't you send me to Berlin, then?"

"Right! Just stand there while I put in the coordinates." She pointed to the platform between the boxes and dashed to an odd computerlike device connected to the IMT. "Okay, Berlin, Germany... Got it!"

The IMT started to hum slowly. As it did, a thought came over Miles. "Ema, how do I get back?"

Her smile froze on her face "Um... I..."

She was interrupted by colored sparks flying out of the IMT. "Uh, that's not good."

Miles started forward. "Ema, I-" The rest was cut off as his body was enveloped in a burst of green light and disappeared.

Ema stared in horror at her machine as it slowly died down.

"Uh-oh."

* * *

Miles Edgeworth looked around himself. This did not look like Berlin.

...Or did it? He noticed slight similarities in the atmosphere, in the architecture, but everything seemed somehow... older. And deserted. Quite deserted.

_Where is everybody?_ he thought as he walked down a thoroughfare toward where he thought he heard noise. Cheering... and marching.

His confusion trebled as he rounded a corner and saw what looked like most of Berlin gathered around a wide street, cheering and waving flags as... soldiers passed? He thought they were soldiers, although they dressed peculiarly.

Another group of soldiers marched by, carrying banners emblazoned with... no mistaking it. Those were definitely swastikas. Looking around, he saw swastikas on all the flags the jubilant crowdmembers were waving, too.

Suddenly terrified, he grabbed the shoulders of a random man in the crowd. "Welcher tag es ist?" he asked hesitatingly.

The man grinned and replied, **[A/N:I will be translating the German to English from now on] **"January 30, of course! The day of our glorious Fuhrer's rise to power!"

"Then the year is... 1933?"

The man gave him an odd look. "Of course." He turned back to watching the parade.

Miles stumbled away in horror. A cold sweat was beginning to cover his face. _Ema Skye... what on Earth have you DONE to me?!_

* * *

**Uh-oh is right, Ema. Look where you landed poor Miles! I hope you can find him... or if you can even land in the same year as him... Ahahahahaha!**

**And what will Lana say? What, indeed...  
**


	2. Charleroi

**Ah, I'm writing again. So soon after I said I wouldn't be for a while. Go figure. Well, just... just read and, hopefully, enjoy. We get to see more of Miles in Naziland, and what will Ema do? And what about Lana in all of this? Ooh, the plot thickens like my mother's soup!  
**

* * *

Ema slumped into a chair, staring openmouthed at her IMT. "Oh, dear. Oh, no. Oh, crap." _Miles will kill me... Oh, no, wait, Lana will kill me first. Oh no..._

She glared at the machine, which now stood silent. "Damn hunk of junk!"

Even still, all her rage against the machine only led her back to the knowledge that _she _was the one who had devised and built the thing.

Slowly, she raised herself from the chair, shaking her head silently as she walked to the IMT's control panel. "Well... at least I know it works..."

She looked over the myriad of levers, knobs, and buttons that constituted the control panel. "Doesn't _seem _like anything's wrong..."

"Although of course it is most certainly not supposed to spout colored sparks and rattle like that," she finished, musing to herself. She was mentally kicking herself for, through all of her tests with small objects and eventually small lifeforms, she had never registered the fact that she had to physically _retrieve _everything she'd transported. She knew the IMT could send small objects far- she'd driven to Oakland a few days before to fetch the toaster she'd sent there as the final test- but she wasn't certain if the machine could reach as far as Germany, and with an object as large as a human to boot. She was suddenly stricken by the fearful thought that she might have plunked Miles clear in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

"Why, oh why didn't I test this on myself?" she moaned. "If Miles did make it to Berlin, he'll be happy... but if he didn't he will be very. _Very. _Cross."

* * *

Miles Edgeworth had indeed made it to Berlin, but he was also very, _very _cross. And terrified. _Very _terrified.

He slumped against a wall, hand to brow and breathing heavily. The noise of the military parade could be faintly heard in the distance.

"Wh- How- I don't even-" Miles Edgeworth was a brilliant individual, but suddenly finding oneself in Nazi Germany, even in the early, pre-let's-kill-every-non-Aryan days, could reduce even Dr. Evangelis Katsioulis to a gibbering idiot. Miles Edgeworth was currently that gibbering idiot.

"Germany isn't Nazi. Germany isn't Nazi. No, not Nazi. They're all gone. No Himmler, no Goebbels, no Goering..." He broke off and slid down the wall to land in a heap at the bottom.

A passing man looked warily at the oddly-dressed lunatic whispering to himself in English and quickly crossed to the other side of the street. Edgeworth took no notice. He was quite clearly, if temporarily, insane.

* * *

Lana Edgeworth dug the key out of her pocket and opened the door to her spacious home. She looked around in confusion for a second, before it hit her: no loud clangs and hisses coming from Ema's laboratory.

"Ema?" she called. She could've sworn she heard a muted curse and a slight metallic report.

"Ema? Are you there?"

"Y-Yeah, sis! I'm-I'm fine!"

Lana scowled in annoyance. She had learned long ago how to tell when her sister was lying. She decided not to pursue the matter further, as Miles had assuredly dealt with whatever problem there was.

_Come to think of it, where is Miles?_ Lana wondered. "Miles?" she called.

Now she was certain she'd heard Ema say "F*ck!" That was _most _unlike her sister. "Ema! What on earth is going on!"

Ema yelped. "N-Nothing! Just... just leave me be!"

Lana stormed up the stairs. "EMA SKYE! TELL ME WHAT IS-"

A cataclysmic racket burst from the spare bedroom. Lana raced to the door and flung it open, just in time to see a flash of green light erupt from an odd machine. And... was that _Ema's _silhouette in the flash?

* * *

Ema landed right on her face on a dirt path. "Ow..."

She stood up, brushing herself off. So perhaps sending herself off with the IMT wasn't such a good idea, but it was an infinitely better option than staying to face the wrath of her sister.

"So, where am I?"

It was a good question. She was standing on a cobblestone path, with sparse woods to one side and an open field to the other. She wasn't sure _where _exactly it was, but she knew it wasn't Berlin.

_Aw... and I thought I got the coordinates right... _she thought sadly. Her gaze drifted to the woods side, where her attention was drawn to a wooden signpost. She hurried over to it.

"Let's see... Oh, it's written in... French? I guess I miscalculated..." she said disappointedly.

"Anyways, where am I going? Looks like three kilometres to... Charleroi?"

* * *

**Well, that's Chapter 2 of _Adventures _**_**in the Past!** _**Hope you liked it****, and I'll let you figure out for yourself the significance of Charleroi!**


	3. Trio

**Sorry in advance for both subjecting you to more German, non-German speakers, and butchering your language, German-speakers.  
**

* * *

Miles Edgeworth had gotten control of himself. He stood leaning against a building, mind racing. Impossible as it seemed, there was no escaping the fact that somehow Ema's blasted contraption had landed him in the midst of the literal Evil Empire. Now that he'd accepted that fact, he was busy going over ways to get _out _of the country.

_Good thing it's still 1933, _he thought. _This would be much harder if World War II had already started..._

He turned over possibilities in his mind. It wouldn't be too hard to get to Poland or Czechoslovakia, where he'd be safe for at least a few years. He knew Switzerland would be the best place to flee, but no matter what he thought, one nasty thought kept tugging at the back of his mind...

_How're you going to get _anywhere? _You've got no money!_

Edgeworth sighed. 45 minutes he'd been debating with himself and he kept returning to that one point. He didn't have a single dollar on him, much less a mark. He had no survival skills whatsoever, so hoofing it to Switzerland was out of the question. He'd need to get some sort of a job, and earn money to flee the country, before he could puzzle out how to get back to his own time.

There were going to be some _harsh _words between him and Ema when he got back.

Or, that nagging part of his brain reminded him, _if _he got back...

* * *

Ema couldn't figure out the significance of the sign. Her field was science, not geography or history.

Moreover, it was hard to concentrate what with that rumbling off in the distance. She looked up, confused, but there was hardly a cloud in the sky. It certainly wasn't thunder.

For a second, she stood deliberating whether or not to investigate before her natural curiosity won out and she set off in the direction of the noise.

* * *

Lana. Was. Furious.

It didn't even occur to her to be afraid that her sister had just been vaporized. She was positively livid with the thought that her sister had just done, well, _something _to her husband.

"EMA SKYE! YOU- YOU- WHY I'LL-" Lana was incapable of even forming a coherent sentence, so deep was her wrath. A thought broke through the red haze of her mind. _Go after Ema- make her find Miles- get her OUT OF THE HOUSE- _for Lana was once a top prosecutor, and it hadn't taken her long to realize that Ema had probably accidentally sent Miles somewhere.

She stalked to the now-silent control panel. It was dark. She glowered at it, but there was no response. Machines don't frighten easily.

After a bit of searching, she deduced that the cord linking the control panel to the IMT had been severed. She cursed and re-attached the two lengths.

The control panel had now lit up. Unfortunately, no numbers had appeared. Lana had no way of telling where Ema or Miles had gone.

Angered, she decided to try searching the main part of the IMT itself. She didn't notice her elbow hitting a switch on the control panel as she did so.

* * *

Miles Edgeworth stood outside a large, imposing building. He'd asked a passing man in German if there was somewhere that they were hiring, and he'd been unsettled by his grin and clear glee as he gave directions. He could tell why by the large hammer-and-sickle flag over the entranceway.

_The Communist Party is not a good organization to belong to in Nazi Germany, _he thought.

He turned away, not intending to even enter the building, when something caught his eye. Er, started covering his eye. Fear was forestalled by perplexion and curiosity; was Berlin often coated in a purplish cloud?

As it began to cloud out his entire field of vision, he finally realized that this was something to be afraid of. He gasped, and a second later, he was unconscious.

A few stunned Berliners would recount to disbelieving friends for years afterwards how this dapper American had simply disappeared before their eyes.

* * *

Ema was beginning to get apprehensive. She'd been walking for half and hour, and the noise was growing louder and louder. It was not a constant rumbling, as she'd first assumed, but a fairly discordant number of large booms, underscored by smaller crackles. And it was LOUD.

Her anxiety grew as she got closer. She turned a corner and suddenly screamed as a horrific sight greeted her.

Three corpses lay in the middle of the road. One man had had his face shredded; the other two had died equally violent, if not quite so gruesome, deaths.

Ema could tell that some kind of explosion had killed the men, seeing as there was a giant crater a fair ways from the bodies. She could tell no more, as she was too busy turning to run in terror.

A voice stopped her. "Fraulein... Fraulein, helfen..."

One of the men was not as dead as he'd seemed. Ema considered tending to the man, but her fright was still so great that she was prepared to flee, until...

"Fraulein, helfen Sie mir bitte... bitten..." A pleading tone had entered the man's voice.

Ema broke. She could not in good conscience abandon the poor tortured soul who lay behind her. She regretted turning Miles down when he'd offered to teach her German.

She knelt beside the man. "What is it? What do you need?"

He looked at her, confused. _Guess he can't speak English. _She put her hand on his shoulder, and he stiffened, wincing. "Yeow!"

Ema looked with sadness down at the wounds in the man's chest and abdomen. She was no doctor, but she could tell they were fatal. The man noticed her eyes and expression, and a look of pure terror crossed his face.

"Nein... _Nein..._" He began to cry. Ema stroked his brow in an attempt to comfort him. Suddenly he began to gasp and choke. "Wasser! Wasser!"

His hand scrabbled weakly for his pack, but he could barely move it, and it was clear that he'd never reach his water-bottle. Ema set her hand upon his, stopping his frantic movements, and pulled out the water-bottle. She put it to his lips, and the man drank desperately.

As he drank, he slowly began taking in less and less water with each subsequent gulp, until finally his head dropped back and he moved no more.

Ema knelt there shocked for several seconds, water pouring from the bottle onto the now-dead man's face, until finally she came to her senses and flung herself backwards. She sat there panting for what seemed like ages, still clutching the empty water-bottle. _I... I just watched a man die..._

_My God, where did I send myself?_


End file.
